Pope Benedict XVI is winning over hearts .. and minds

From THE NEW YORK TIMES ...

-- "I have been pleasantly surprised by what we have seen thus far," said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, an American Jesuit who is a professor at the Gregorian, a pontifical university in Rome. "What strikes me is that he is clearly a man of deep prayer and spirituality. He is very intelligent, a good theologian. And he is very humble. He clearly does not want to call attention to himself."

-- "At first, I wasn't sure about this pope," said Teresa La Peruta, 59, a homemaker from Naples who, along with thousands of other Catholics, cheered Benedict recently in St. Peter's Square, even though she did not like his involvement in the fight over the fertility law. "I have to be honest: I didn't like him."

"He is beginning to win me over," said Ms. La Peruta. "I hope he does so more and more."

-- His writings have found a new and larger audience, one that appreciates their intelligence and clarity. " I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger," the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal last month. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same thing, there must be some truth there."

[Not everyone is warming up to Pope Benedict, like poor old Frances "Quisling" Kissling, president of an anti-Catholic, pro-abortion group]

-- For more liberal Catholics, the current honeymoon represents a victory of style over substance: Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, an American group that advocates abortion rights, said Benedict had reached out to non-Catholics but not to Catholics who disagree with church teaching on abortion, contraception or the place of women in the church.

"It reminds me of my mother," Ms. Kissling said. "My mother was a person all my friends adored. She was urbane. She was modern. And she was charming. Yet at home she was a strict disciplinarian and a pain in the neck.

She said she had hoped that a new pope would "concentrate intensely on healing the deep political rift that exists between orthodox Catholics and liberal or progressive Catholics, because the church internally is in bad shape." Under Benedict, she predicted, "this is not going to happen."